Last year we took a look at this CIPS initiative and its very good website to tempt young people into procurement as a career: iBuy – and I get paid for it! And we concluded that it’s a clever initiative that we thought will go a long way to helping young people with their procurement career paths in any sector in any industry. And lo and behold! This year they go and win the memcom membership excellence awards. We are delighted for them and we believe: well deserved.

If you haven’t heard of them, memcom is a ‘membership communications’ organisation that connects senior leaders to collaborate and harness best practice to help drive the sector forward and celebrate its success. Its annual event, the memcom conference and awards, takes place in May, and showcases the success of professional associations, membership organisations and the wider non-profit sector.

As an aside, The I Am Group acquired the memcom brand from the Membership Organisation in May 2017. The I Am Group now comprises memcom and I am recruiting, a specialist recruitment agency working with the bodies mentioned above. So that website is also worth a visit if you’re in the job searching market place. But back to CIPS:

There were 29 categories of awards, split into innovation, people, and marketing, communications and membership excellence. And apparently this year saw the highest ever engagement – so the accolade is even greater. CIPS won the ‘Best Student Engagement Initiative Award’ which is a new award introduced this year to recognise the role played by professional associations in increasing engagement amongst students, junior members and young people. It’s the wider social impact relevance that’s good to hear about in this award – for professional bodies that have a direct positive impact on the public good. We’d love to hear more about the CIPS award entry to find what the extent of student engagement was?

It’s timely too, as a recent CIPS/ Hays Procurement Salary Guide and Insights survey pointed out that more than half (56%) of the employers asked said they have struggled to find the procurement skills they need in the past 12 months - an increase from last year.

“The top challenge for recruitment was lack of sector skills and experience, cited by 47%, and budget restraints, cited by 47%. Candidate salary expectations were a barrier for 40%, lack of technical skills for 32% and organisational fit for 27%.” You can read more about that here. We also hear about skill shortages from CPOs and others at every procurement conference we attend, so the more bright young things we can attract the better.

CIPS director Cath Hill received the award saying “We are thrilled to have won this award for our #iBuy student engagement project. Working with our partners Haymarket, the #iBuy campaign has brought a fresh and innovative way to showcase procurement as an excellent career choice. The project has been extremely well received within the procurement community across the globe as well as with schools and careers advisers … The icing on the cake now is to have been recognised by our fellow membership peers by receiving this award.”

So well done to the #iBuy initiative, which you can read all about here.